a spreading of wings, a bating of breath, a sense of something coming

Closing, executing

This journey is the true end of the experiment Ori and I began last October. I am returning to clean things up and return our possessions to our new home.
This is the last leg. I am doing it alone.
There is depth in this I am reaching for, stretching for, beginning to touch.
The following was a piece of that.
—

As I’m waking up today, I’m feeling really positive. More and more excited to be on this journey. It’s been mellow thus face, reminding me how much of the social awkwardness I’ve been exuding as of late is less about me and more about other issues and complications outside of me.

I realize that when I want to, I am natrually (said loosely here because this is actually an intentionally trained response) outgoing and explanatory. I generally pay attention to if I’m smiling or not. I care about positivity.

When I am outwrdly steeped in it, I become resentful.

The land here is hard to come by inspiration from. It feels hollow in its wide-openness. Emptied out. These, I believe, are the ghosts — yokai — of this place. Haunted by a dead lack of life.

As if you can just look out at the bubbling hills and white crested mountain, and you can hear the ghostly whispers of what life had once been here. The land here feels scattered now, broken apart, torn into small and insignificant bits. Loose pieces of a once-whole puzzle strewn across a blank sheet.

The image, though complete to my eye, is inconsistent and incomplete itself. My European-descended blood lacks an understanding of what may have been lost. My pale skin knows nothing of this, but it takes a passing and protected view. My post-industrial, convenience-born, assembly-line-bred, corporate-raised brain can envision nothing of the ways of life now wipes lovelessly from existence.

I can only look and feel this indescribable loss, this lack — for lack of a better word. And even with that, I gain little to no access to any of this.